Category: Collaboration & Joint Conduct

We wrote before about a decision by an Alabama federal district court to analyze claims in the Blue Cross Blue Shield multi-district litigation under a per se standard. The court found that a licensing rule allegedly requiring member plans to derive at least two-thirds of their revenue from Blue-branded plans was effectively an “output restriction” which, especially combined with the designation of exclusive service areas among the member plans, constituted a per se Sherman Act violation.

A court’s decision regarding the proper standard of review in a Sherman Act Section 1 case—whether to analyze the defendant’s conduct as a per se antitrust violation or under the “rule of reason”—is highly significant. The rule of reason requires a plaintiff to show that the anticompetitive effects of the conduct are not outweighed by its procompetitive benefits—often, a factually intensive analysis. But under the per se standard a plaintiff (and the court) may dispense with this balancing test; it is necessary only to prove that the conduct actually happened.

Last month, we reported on a partial settlement in an antitrust case alleging that entities within the Duke and the University of North Carolina systems agreed not to hire each other’s medical personnel unless the lateral hire involved a promotion. The Court has now granted in part the plaintiff’s motion to certify a class.

In a case of first impression, the Third Circuit recently held in In re Processed Egg Products Antitrust Litigation, No. 16-3795, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 2698 (3d Cir. Jan. 22, 2018), that a direct purchaser of a product, comprised partly (but not all) of price-fixed materials, has antitrust standing to pursue a claim against the product’s seller where the seller is a participant in the alleged price-fixing conspiracy, even if the product also includes some material supplied by a third-party non-conspirator.

As the college basketball season heats up, bitter rivals Duke and the University of North Carolina stand accused of maintaining a cozier (and illegal) relationship off the court. UNC, the UNC School of Medicine, and the UNC Health Care System (together the “UNC Defendants”) recently entered into a settlement agreement with a class of individuals employed by the UNC Defendants or of Duke-affiliated defendants (“the Duke Defendants”) between 2012 and 2017 to resolve an action alleging that the Duke Defendants and UNC Defendants agreed not to hire each other’s medical personnel unless the lateral hire involved a promotion. The settlement enjoins the UNC Defendants from agreeing to refrain from soliciting, hiring, or otherwise “poaching” employees of any other company or organization.

In July of 2013, Danny Meyer, the CEO of the Union Square Hospitality Group, tweeted that he was considering eliminating tipping at his restaurants and solicited the opinion of other restaurant owners. Meyer and others eventually followed through on this idea and eliminated tipping at some of their restaurants. Instead, they began charging service fees while also raising menu prices to account for the increase in wages needed to compensate previously tipped employees. A newly filed putative class-action complaint alleges that these no-tipping policies, rather than being undertaken for largely equitable reasons, are in fact a massive antitrust conspiracy among restauranteurs to raise consumer prices.

In a 2-1 decision issued on September 7, 2017, the Eleventh Circuit reversed a district court decision dismissing antirust claims brought by auto body shops against a group of car insurance companies in the In re Auto Body Shop Antitrust Litigation.

On August 29, 2017, the D.C. Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision dismissing a suit filed by 2012 third-party presidential candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, their running mates, their campaigns, and the parties they represented (together, “Plaintiffs”) against the Commission on Presidential Debates. Plaintiffs alleged that Johnson and Stein were improperly excluded from nationally televised general-election presidential debates in violation of the Sherman Act.

On July 28, 2017, a group of plaintiffs filed a putative class action in the Northern District of California against BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Daimler, and Mercedes-Benz, as well as auto-parts manufacturer Robert Bosch. The suit alleges that, extending as far back as 1996, these five German car manufacturers colluded to suppress competition by agreeing to limit technological advancement, selecting favored suppliers, and exchanging confidential business information. The class-action suit follows recent publications reporting that European Union antitrust officials and the German Cartel Office are investigating allegations of a cartel among these manufacturers.

Recently in In re Pre-Filled Propane Tank Antitrust Litigation, an en banc panel of the Eighth Circuit clarified the application of the continuing violation exception to the statute of limitations for claims under the Sherman Act. The Court was closely divided, with a 5-to-4 split between the majority opinion and a sharply worded dissent. The majority held that, in an antitrust conspiracy suit, a continuing violation tolls the statute of limitations as long as there were unlawful acts (e.g., sales to the plaintiff) within the limitations period, even if the alleged conspiracy was hatched outside the four-year statute of limitations period. The dissent, however, argued that to avoid dismissal plaintiffs are required to show a live, ongoing conspiracy within the limitations period.

On Monday, just a few days after the Justices of the Supreme Court conferred on the cert petition in the Vitamin C price fixing antitrust case, the Court asked the Acting Solicitor General to file a brief “expressing the views of the United States.” The cert petition comes after a Second Circuit decision reversing a $147 million jury award to vitamin C importers who successfully argued in the court below that two Chinese companies fixed the prices of vitamin C exported to the United States in violation of the Sherman Act.

A new book was recently released about the events surrounding the alleged LIBOR fixing conspiracy. Authored by Wall Street Journal reporter David Enrich, The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History tackles the issues from a unique perspective, focusing on one of the main bankers involved, Tom Hayes. Hayes, formerly a trader at UBS and Citigroup, was prosecuted by the U.K. Serious Fraud Office in 2015. He was convicted of conspiracy to defraud for his role in fixing LIBOR and is serving an 11-year prison sentence.

Since we last reported on the state and federal government’s generic drug pricing investigations and litigations (click here to read more), the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has obtained its first guilty pleas. On January 9, 2017, Heritage Pharmaceutical Inc.’s former CEO and its former president (the defendants are brothers-in-law) pleaded guilty to manipulating the prices of and divvying up customers for an antibiotic, doxycycline hyclate, and a diabetes medicine, glyburide. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on September 28, 2017, and they face up to ten years of imprisonment. The government’s filings in other lawsuits make clear that the defendants’ sentencing was delayed until the defendants complete their cooperation with the government.

Manufacturers of containerboard and corrugated products have asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on a Circuit split concerning the impact of negotiated prices on class certification in antitrust cases brought under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Petitioners filed for a writ of certiorari on December 30, 2016, arguing that the Seventh Circuit in Kleen Products LLC, et al. v. International Paper Company, et al., Nos. 15-2385, 15-2386 (7th Cir. Aug. 4 2016),erred in two related ways, both of which flow from the fact that prices of the containerboard products at issue in the case tend to be individually negotiated.

As we have previously reported, (click, here, here, here, and here to read more), generic drug manufacturers have recently come under intense scrutiny from state and federal regulators for their price hikes. Last week, the Department of Justice and twenty state attorneys general instituted criminal and civil proceedings in connection with alleged generic drug price manipulation.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week issued antitrust guidelines for human resources (HR) professionals. The guidelines highlight the most common antitrust violations, based on a review of cases in which federal antitrust agencies have taken enforcement actions against employers. There are three main takeaways from this guidance.

by Daniel A. Friedman and William F. Cavanaugh, Jr. on October 14, 2016

The Southern District of New York recently denied motions to dismiss filed by several banks that allegedly conspired to manipulate the price of gold and silver. Only defendant UBS was successful in convincing the court that the allegations against it failed to state a plausible antitrust claim.

As we’ve written, Uber, the popular app-based car service, has been on the antitrust defensive, facing allegations that its algorithm for calculating prices restricts price competition. In Wallen v. St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission, No. 15-cv-01432 (E.D. Mo.), however, it’s on offense, joining forces with some of its riders and drivers in a claim that the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission’s refusal to allow it and other ridesharing companies to operate in St. Louis is an antitrust violation. The plaintiffs allege that the Commission, composed of active market participants, is precluding competition by denying ridesharing services the ability to operate. The complaint also names as defendants the cab companies with which the Commission’s members are affiliated. The Commission and its members moved to dismiss on the basis that they are immune from antitrust liability, and the cab companies moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim. On October 7, 2016, the court denied the Commission defendants’ motion to dismiss and granted the cab companies motion to dismiss, with leave to replead.

On August 23, 2016, the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri allowed claims by a compounding pharmacy to proceed, denying a motion to dismiss filed by the defendant pharmacy benefit manager (“PBM”). In Precision Rx Compounding LLC, et al. v. Express Scripts Holding Co., et al., No. 16-cv-0069 (E.D. Mo.), the plaintiff Precision Rx is a compounding pharmacy and the defendant, Express Scripts, is a PBM that contracts with health plan administrators and insurance payors to manage pharmacy benefit plans.

Antitrust standing is one of the most beguiling concepts in antitrust law, but it is a hurdle that a plaintiff must negotiate if its claim can proceed. This week, the Second Circuit provided some clarity to the doctrine when it affirmed a district court decision dismissing the antitrust claims of end users of aluminum for lack of antitrust standing in In re Aluminum Warehousing Antitrust Litigation.

On July 5, 2016, investors filed a federal class action [add link to pdf] in the Southern District of New York alleging defendant banks had manipulated the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR) “and/or” Singapore Swap Offer Rate (SOR) market, forcing investors to pay artificial prices for financial derivative transactions based on these benchmarks. This lawsuit follows on the heels of the Second Circuit’s decision in In re: LIBOR-Based Financial Instruments Antitrust Litigation, which allowed the case to proceed.

As our loyal readers know, on May 23, 2016, the Second Circuit issued a decision in the In re: LIBOR-Based Financial Instruments Antitrust Litigation vacating the District Court’s prior decision dismissing one case in this consolidated action. Our analysis of that decision is available here. Notably, however, the Second Circuit declined to rule on whether the plaintiffs (the “Plaintiffs”) are “efficient enforcers” of the antitrust laws and remanded that question for the District Court’s consideration.

What facts beyond mere membership in a trade association trigger Sherman Act liability? Next term, the Supreme Court will hear an antitrust case testing the requirements for pleading the conspiracy element of a claim brought under the Sherman Act—namely, whether the allegation that defendants belong to an association is sufficient for a Section 1 claim.

Certifying a class of direct purchasers of sheet metal parts alleging claims under section 1 of the Sherman Act, Judge Lynn Adelman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin focused on what it means for common questions to predominate in an antitrust class action.

On May 23, 2016, the Second Circuit issued a long-awaited decision in the In re: LIBOR‐Based Financial Instruments Antitrust Litigation, vacating the District Court’s (Buchwald, J.) prior decision dismissing one case in this consolidated action.

It is plausible that Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, may have violated antitrust law by fixing prices charged to Uber passengers, a judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concluded last week in denying Kalanick’s motion to dismiss. The lawsuit, Meyer v. Kalanick, is a putative class action initiated by Spencer Meyer, a resident of Connecticut, on behalf of people who, like him, have used Uber car services. The complaint also names a subclass of people who have been charged according to Uber’s “surge pricing” model.

Courts continue to evaluate the degree to which “reverse payments” are permitted post-Actavis. In the latest of these decisions, issued on February 22, 2016, the First Circuit held that non-cash payments may run afoul of the antitrust laws.

We will soon know whether the Supreme Court will grant Apple’s cert petition asking the Court to review and reverse its antitrust violation for conspiring with publishers to fix the prices of e-books. The Court will consider the petition at its next conference on February 19. As we previously reported here and here, a divided Second Circuit panel affirmed the district court’s findings that the per se rule applied to Apple’s conduct and that Apple violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

In the wake of Major League Baseball’s settlement of antitrust claims on the eve of trial, the central question from the lawsuit remains: are sports leagues’ exclusive broadcasting territories for live games an antitrust violation? Although suits against the MLB and National Hockey League have both settled, analogous antitrust claims are pending against the National Football League, leaving open the possibility that these issues may be finally resolved in the court room.

On November 25, 2015, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the $156 million antitrust judgment in MM Steel, L.P. v. JSW Steel (USA) Incorporated; Nucor Corporation, upholding a jury verdict that found one defendant steel manufacturer (JSW Steel) liable for participation in an illegal conspiracy to block distributor MM Steel from entering the market. The Court of Appeals reversed the jury verdict as to defendant Nucor, another steel manufacturer. In so doing, the Fifth Circuit identified evidence that does—and does not—tend to exclude the possibility of independent conduct for purposes of finding a violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act. The court also underscored that per se liability (and not the rule of reason) attaches to horizontal conspirators’ use of vertical agreements to shut competitors out of the market.

On November 17, 2015, the FTC submitted an amicus brief to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in In re Effexor XR Antitrust Litigation, where the district court had dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims of antitrust violations based on an alleged reverse payment under FTC v. Actavis, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2223 (2013). In its brief, the FTC argues that its failure to object to a pharmaceutical patent settlement should play no role whatsoever in evaluating the legality of alleged reverse payments, and urged the Third Circuit to reverse the district court’s decision to the extent it relied on such considerations.

On November 12, 2015, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion partially reversing the dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims in Hanover 3201 Realty, LLC v. Village Supermarkets, Inc., finding that plaintiff Hanover Realty had successfully pleaded antitrust standing with regard to certain of its claims. The Third Circuit clarified—and potentially expanded the scope of—its prior interpretations of the Supreme Court’s seminal standing decision in Blue Shield of Va. v. McCready, 457 U.S. 465 (1982), which held that a plaintiff did not necessarily need to be a consumer or a competitor of a defendant to establish antitrust injury, if it could show that its injury was “inextricably intertwined” with the injury to intended victims of an antitrust conspiracy.

On September 23, the Hong Kong Competition Commission (HKCC) released a draft of its “Leniency Policy for Undertakings Engaged in Cartel Conduct.” The draft specifies when the HKCC will refrain from pursuing monetary penalties against an entity in exchange for that entity’s cooperation. The HKCC was created when Hong Kong’s Legislative Council passed a competition ordinance in 2012. The Competition Ordinance applies to any agreement that has the object or effect of preventing, restricting, or distorting competition in Hong Kong, even if the parties and concerted activity are outside of Hong Kong. Over the past three years, the HKCC has slowly released guidelines related to the implementation of the Ordinance. With the release of the leniency policy, the HKCC is on track to begin enforcing the Competition Ordinance in mid-December 2015.

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit ruled in the long awaited O’Bannon v. NCAA case, which challenged NCAA rules that bar student-athletes from “being paid for the use of their names, images, and likenesses” (NILs) – part of the so-called “amateurism rules.” The Court upheld the district court’s decision finding the NCAA amateurism rules to be an unlawful restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Act and upheld part of the district court’s remedy which permanently enjoined the NCAA from prohibiting its member schools from giving student-athletes scholarships up to the full cost of attendance at their respective schools. The Ninth Circuit struck down, however, the district court’s second remedy which would have permanently enjoined the NCAA from prohibiting its member schools from giving student-athletes up to $5,000 per year in deferred compensation.

Earlier this month, Apple signaled its intention to petition for writ of certiorari after the Second Circuit upheld Judge Cote’s decision to apply per se liability in analyzing the firm’s conduct with respect to e-books in United States v. Apple Inc. We have previously reported on the decisions below where both the Second Circuit and the Southern District of New York concluded that per se liability applies because, even though Apple’s contracts with publishers were vertical agreements (and thus would usually require the rule of reason analysis per the Supreme Court’s Leegin decision), Apple’s organization of competing e-book publishers to raise e-book prices created a horizontal agreement.

Last week, a divided three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit issued a significant decision in a boycott conspiracy case, SD3, LLC v. Black & Decker, No. 14-1746 (4th Cir. Sept. 15, 2015). The suit, at its heart, turns on the interpretation of the Twombly plausibility standard and the application of the Supreme Court’s precedent on pleading standards to antitrust actions at early stages of litigation.

Our Antitrust practice group recently co-authored a series of articles in Inside Counsel discussing major antitrust issues facing in-house counsel today. Our articles expand on topics that we have covered in this blog, including the Actavis litigation, the change in the competition landscape across the globe and antitrust reforms in Europe and Asia, antitrust enforcement in e-commerce, the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners on antitrust liability for professional boards, and the Department of Justice’s recent guidance on antitrust compliance programs.

This past Tuesday, the Seventh Circuit upheld the decision of Judge Robert M. Dow Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granting cheese manufacturer Schreiber Foods Inc.’s motion for summary judgment in an antitrust class action. The Seventh Circuit agreed with the District Court that the plaintiffs, led by a cheese distributor and a dairy farmer and milk futures trader, lacked evidence to support their claims that Schreiber conspired with Dairy Farmers of America, a dairy marketing cooperative, to increase the price of raw milk.

Last week, we discussed public reports of an investigation by the DOJ of four major airlines (American, Delta, Southwest, and United) regarding possible collusion. Over the past two months, a number of consumers have filed class action complaints against the airlines, putting forward their own theories regarding collusion.

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion affirming the dismissal of plaintiffs’ consolidated complaint in In re Musical Instruments and Equipment Antitrust Litigation. In addressing plaintiffs’ allegations of a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, the Ninth Circuit reiterated that each component of such a conspiracy (both vertical and horizontal) must be evaluated separately.

This spring, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (the “CMA”) published a study on UK businesses’ awareness and understanding of competition law, understanding of anti-competitive behaviors, and penalties for any violations. The study included interviews of more than one thousand senior personnel with responsibility for sales at private sector businesses in the UK. Among other questions, they were asked to answer a series of 10 true/false questions to evaluate their understanding of competition law.

The Ninth Circuit issued an order last Friday staying an injunction from U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California in O’Bannon v. NCAA until it reaches a decision on the merits of the appeal.

Together with the State of Michigan, the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division has filed a civil suit against four Michigan hospital systems for allegedly agreeing to limit marketing in each other’s territories. Three of the hospital systems—Hillsdale Community Health Center, Community Health Center of Branch County, and ProMedica Health System—have agreed to settle the charges.

We have previously posted about United States v. Apple, Inc., a blockbuster trial that ended with Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York concluding that Apple had conspired with five publishing companies to raise the price of e-books. At oral argument before the Second Circuit, the panel hearing Apple’s appeal seemed particularly interested in whether the district court had erred in applying the relatively lenient per se standard rather than the rule of reason, under which the plaintiffs would have had to prove that the anti-competitive injury caused by Apple outweighed any pro-competitive benefits of its conduct.

Yesterday, the FTC announced that it reached a settlement in its pay-for-delay lawsuit, FTC v. Cephalon Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, with Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries, Ltd., which acquired Cephalon in 2012. This case is the first FTC case to be resolved since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in FTC v. Actavis, in which the Court announced that reverse-payment patent settlements could be subject to antitrust challenges.

Last Thursday, American Express appealed the District Court for the Eastern District of New York’s February ruling that its anti-steering rules violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The court entered a permanent injunction in April requiring American Express to change its anti-steering rules and allow merchants to steer customers to use other credit cards or other forms of payment.

Last Thursday the Supreme Court of California decided In re Cipro Cases I & II, No. S198616 (Cal. May 7, 2015), holding that reverse payment, or “pay-for-delay,” settlements can be challenged as unreasonable restraints on trade. In so doing, it followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc., 133 S.Ct. 2223 (2013).

About Our Blog

Antitrust Update Blog is a source of insights, information and analysis on criminal and civil antitrust and competition-related issues. Patterson Belknap’s antitrust lawyers represent clients in antitrust litigation and counseling matters, including those related to pricing, marketing, distribution, franchising, and joint ventures and other strategic alliances. We have significant experience with government civil and criminal/cartel investigations, providing the unique perspectives of former top U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division lawyers from both the civil and criminal sides.